A Place to Stand

Comments from Scotland on politics, technology & all related matters (ie everything)/"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."Henry Louis Mencken....WARNING - THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS HAVE DECIDED THAT THIS BLOG IS LIKELY TO BE MISTAKEN FOR AN OFFICIAL PARTY SITE (no really, unanimous decision) I PROMISE IT ISN'T SO ENTER FREELY & OF YOUR OWN WILL

I believe in publicly acknowledging when I am wrong - if only because the discipline makes me less likely to be.

So was I wrong?

Maybe not.
We are told an American raid caught him in a house, specially built in 2005, in Abbottabad. Abbotabd, a military town founded by a Victorian officer called Abbott is pretty much the Langley and west Point of Pakistan rolled into one. Clearly something deeply embarrassing to the Pakistani government happened there or they would be loudly calling it a hoax. Finding bin Laden there is like finding Hitler had retired to a mansion in Langley and the CIA were claiming not to have noticed. Anybody who suggested that was even possible would be considered beyond a conspiracy theorist and right into loony tunes territory.

Whoever it was was clearly a leader of al Quaeda and was being protected by the Pakistani military/intelligence complex. Was it bin Laden? Lets leave that a minute.

Did the Pakistani government know? This raises the question of who exactly wields power there? Who is the state within the state? The current President of Pakistan is the husband of former leader Benazir Bhutto who was assassinated

Pakistan's military-led former government failed to protect former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto before her 2007 assassination, and intelligence agencies hindered the subsequent investigation, a U.N. commission concluded .....She was killed in December 2007 by a 15-year-old suicide bomber ..."No one believes that this boy acted alone," the report states. "A range of government officials failed profoundly in their efforts first to protect Ms. Bhutto, and second to investigate with vigor all those responsible for her murder, not only in the execution of the attack, but also in its conception, planning and financing." ...A spokesman for then-President Pervez Musharraf [the military commander in chief who previously officially seized power from her and executed her father, apparently with the full confidence of Pakistan's military/intelligence complex] said Friday the government offered adequate protection for Bhutto. ..."I believe the government at the time did whatever they thought was reasonable," said Muhammad Ali Saif, a spokesman and adviser to the former president....Pakistan's government and the CIA blamed the killing on Baitullah Mehsud, a top Pakistani Taliban leader with ties to al Qaeda. Mehsud was killed last year in a suspected U.S. drone strike.

I am sure somebody seniur in Islamic terrorism was killed. Somebody who the people really in charge of Pakistan were working with. If it had been more faked than that the Pakistani authorities would not be standing still for it. Perhaps it was bin Laden but if he is long dead there are no shortage of replacements. Perhaps the Americans thought it was/was likely to be/might be him when they attacked. Perhaps not.

Certainly their actions since and the continual change of the story is not compatible with everything being as we are told. We have been told he was/wasn't armed. That his wife/daughter was used as a human shield/armed and defending him/in the way and was killed/shot in the leg. We have been told the President and cabinet were watching the entire event on close circuit TV/weren't/missed the vital 20 minutes/saw highlights later. We have seen nobody allegedly involved, including the wife/daughter saying anything. We have seen assurances, 6 hours after the event and thus maybe a couple of hours after they got the body to the US fleet, that he had been positively identified by DNA - that is simply impossible since DNA identification, at even the most basic level takes days and if done thoroughly, a couple of weeks. So we have certainly been deliberately lied to and almost certainly repeatedly.

However the strangest action of all was the instant disposal of the body by burial at sea "in accordance with Islamic tradition". Speedy burial is a tradition in all hot countries for obvious reasons. Burial at sea isn't. Burial at sea in Afghanistan and Northern Pakistan obviously isn't because, at its closest, it is 400km from the sea. There have now been complaints that he wasn't shot overboard feet pointing to Mecca so it wasn't actually a "traditional" Islamic burial and clearly no attempt to find out what this tradition was were made. Since it is not a Christian tradition to be blown up in a skyscraper I cannot, for the life of me, see any reason why he should have been given such respects in the first place. Gaddafi's grandchildren weren't..

So they had to dispose of the body, before anybody got a chance to examine it. Does that sound like they didn't know it was somebody else's. If, for no other reason, it should have been kept for a full autopsy. Imagine what Abby could have found out. A real life autopsy at the molecular level would have shown where he had been living and eating over the years; it would have shown if he had had dialysis and possibly which of the 2 of Pakistan's best hospitals located in Abbottabad had treated him; it would have shown a lot about lifestyle. All things an intelligence analyst would want to know. There may well be more - there certainly wouldn't be less. Yet so anxious were they to get rid of the body that this was thrown away. Under what circumstances other than it not being him does this make sense?

So it wasn't him. This is being said by other conspiracy theorists, making the assumption that he is still alive. I make the opposite assumption. The evidence he was already dead, is as good as it ever was (lack of sightings; evidnece that the voice on "his" tapes wasn't him; the tapes changing their line from Saudi matters to Palestine and even "climate change") and that the "failure to find" him was wearing thin, particularly with so many al Quaeda leaders having been found by US drones and killed. He was developing into as elusive a character as the Scarlet Pimpernel, Elvis or the Mattoon Gasser and there is a Presidential election coming up where there would be an incentive to ask obvious questions.

.This raises the question of who exactly wields power here? Who is the state within the state? Under what circumstances can ANYTHING government here tells us be trusted?

My guide for conspiracy theories is that I don't believe anything involving flying saucers or working black magic (non-working but scary stuff like Skull and Bones or the Masons is common). I don'y believe in conspiracies that require those in charge to be very smart or have particular capability to foresee the results of their actions, but really dim stuff like not knowing funeral cistoms is believable. I tend not to believe overly large or complicated conspiracies on Heinlein's dictum that "there is a maximum size to conpsiracies and soap bubbles and for the same reason". However that does not exclude those where it is possible to take strenuous methods to maintain silence (eg the Mafia) or where they aren'tvreally secret, it is just not discussed by respectable people or the media (our police organlegging in Kosovo; 7/8ths of the price of the Forth crossing being theft; theft, nepotism and crony capitalism in government). My other dictum is that everybody lies to make their enemies look bad or themselves look good but nobody lies for the opposite reasons (when Madelina Albright told the world's press that it was the US not Yugoslavia which was being intransigent and trying to start a war you can take it to the bank, though obviously the media took it nowhere).

Assume those in government and media are lying in stupid and greedy ways that you wouldn't believe if you were told it by a drunk in a pub and you won't go far wrong.
This one's fake too

Friday, May 06, 2011

Election results - Scotland, UK & AV Referendum

Whew. The SNP look like getting an overall majority of seats and not far short of a majority of votes.
We will have an SNP government for the next 4 or possibly 5 years. We will have a referendum on independence. We will have more billions poured into windmills and are quite likely to have blackouts within 5 years depending on whether the regulations calling for the closure of most of our coal fired power in 2015 is maintained and whether Hunterston can limp along till then. We will certainly have massive blackouts by then if the SNP keep our power dropping proportionally to 20%. They may say that all the drop must be in 2020, safely beyond their term of governance but without new nuclear or possibly shale gas we are bound to have massive blackouts. In any case with a declining electricity supply we cannot achieve growth. The SNP's real achievement is to have become the party of government without losing their ability to sell themseves as a protest vote.

The Pseudoliberals have been decimated. In Sheffield, Nick Clegg's home, they lost 12 out of 13 council seats, In Manchester they lost them all. In Scotland the only constituency seats they hold are the Orkney and Shetland ones. They lost Robert Brown, their list representative in Glasgow, though Patrick Harvie, the Green list candidate held his seat, currently the only Green. The shift of over 10% of votes cast from the Pseudoliberals to the SNP may or may not have been direct - there has also been a big swing to the SNP in constituencies without big LD votes.

In the 2005 general election they LDs got 22.6% of the vote, placing second after Labour. They were part of the Scottish government and generally seen as the most intelligent part (not that difficult because the rest were Labour). Then they expelled me for proposing embracing growth, by cutting corporation tax and keeping the lights on (pretty moderately compared to what I now think). The SNP then promised to cut corporation tax, won the next election and didn't do so. Since then it has been a constant decline to I expect about 5% and a very poor 4th place. I don't say that I precipitated the decline but I do say that if they had had such policies they could now be where the SNP are, or better. After all polls show that new nuclear has the support of twice as many as oppose it. The SNP's policy of independence and Luddism are both minority ones so there is clearly potential for a party that opposes them, has a credible policy of growing the economy and is sen as moderately competent. The SNP victory is not because they are great but because all the rest, except UKIP who are censored by the openly fascist BBC, are so complacently dreadful.

The AV referendum will not be counted till this afternoon but the turnout across the UK was abysmal and everybody seems agreed it has been lost. The Pseudoliberal's deal with the Tories looks to have gained them nothing and destroyed the party. I expect them to lose senior members to both the Tories and Labour. Their unique selling points used to be that they were a party of protest votes; that their looney policies (more eco-fascist than anybody but the Greens) had never been subjected to government; that they were all things to all men persons; that they had not lied in government (never having been there) and all of these have been destroyed. They can't even pull out of the coalition because that would show them to be dishonourable and must hang on for the full term hoping for something to turn up. I would suggest they fire Clegg and bring back the old leader, Charles Kennedy who is genuinely likable and not much tarred with the coalition. Who knows it might help but I doubt they will. The really need to be liberals but that boat sailed either when I was expelled, or more likely, long before but I just refused to notice.

So lets test their claims overall.
Compare the number of votes each party got at the last election with the number of hits a Google News search of "BBC" and the party name. This us a simple procedure, easily checkable, and while somewhat rough and ready (the BBC not yet having supplied the FoI information they claimed they had "closely scrutinised") it is not subject to any visible bias.

*CPPP means coverage per percentage point, a term not derived from other pepsologists, or practicing politicians or anybody else.

That makes the party political bias of the BBC unequivocally obvious, even during an election when they have been slightly constrained by electoral law.

I must admit to some surprise that the Conservatives only get half the coverage of Labour, even though, as the party in power they have more influence on our lives than the pure vote ratio suggests. The same applies to the LibDems who get 1/3rd the Labour coverage, though right now they perhaps don't want to be noticed. UKIP at 1/5th the coverage for every voter is quite obviously the most discriminated against. The BNP figure at 70% of the Labour one looks good except, of course, that virtually every time they are mentioned it is to be attacked by the BBC fascists - the high ratio of mentions looks more like a way of associating anybody else on the anti-EU/big state side with them. The SNP one is twice the Labour one but I assume this is because Google has noticed I am in Scotland - their overall number of hits is a 10th of Labour's though they are about to beat Labour in Scotland - I think this figure is to skewed to make any conclusions about BBC fascism for or against the SNP.

And the Green party gets 8 times as much coverage as Labour, per voter, and 40 times as much as UKIP.

Obviously if the BBC were not corrupt the ratios would have to be close to equal. Arguably there could be some extra coverage for the parties in, or close to, government. Equally arguably there should be slightly more for small parties to promote "rigorous scrutiny of the policies and campaigns of all parties" - but neither argument can apply to the difference between UKIP and Green coverage. In any case, since it is funded by licence fees from everybody being unbiased towards their customers requires a CPPP closely equal between all parties, particularly during elections, and the holders of all views over the long term (eg the BBC's admission that they have produced 10s of thousands of hours of warming alarmist propaganda and have no slightest intention of doing even 1 hour of balanced debate).

Democracy cannot exist where the people are deliberately prevented from hearing the facts. It can survive politicians on one side lying, where both are able to speak and people may judge, but not the total censorship of the other side

Wednesday, May 04, 2011

Tomorrow Scotland has an election (2 papers one for the local candidate and one top up one for the regional list) and a referendum asking if you want to change the Westminster electoral system from FPTP to AV. This is my opinion:

Scottish ElectionThe regional top up list is the one that matters - it, alone makes our system proportional. In Glasgow the constituency votes will almost all go to Labour but the top up will keep it relatively balanced. For the local list voting to reduce the majority of the idiot who is going to win is useful if there is no personal candidate you trust. That means voting SNP, Conservative or Labour and of those only the Conservatives are even remotely interested in keeping the lights on.

On the regional list I hope everybody votes UKIP. I doubt this for various reasons, primarily that the BBC and STV have decided that news of Britain's 4th largest political party must "whatever happens" be wholly censored in case anybody would like what they say. The press have taken their lead form this; almost all hustings have also decided they may not hust; and Glasgow council, at least, have banned any posters, which obviously works to the advantage of the officially supported parties.

I think that is a fair and accurate assessment that could not be disputed by anybody who does not claim that windmills are not 10 times the cost of nuclear or that pigs do have wings.

AV Referendum
AV is not proportional representation it is merely a compromise. David Cameron, having been responsible for preventing us having PR as an option on this referendum has gone to great lengths to say PR is a better choice than AV. That is both true and deeply corrupt. He is thereby saying that he has deliberately excluded what he knows to be the better option, purely for what he believes party benefit, because he knows the people would vote for it. If there is a Yes vote the logic of his position is that he would immediately, to promote the good government of the country he claims to serve, call for another referendum including PR which he acknowledges is better. I doubt he will do so but am certain that if there is a No vote he will claim it as public opposition to reform and carry on with politics as usual.

Where AV scores is not in being proportional , which it isn’t, but in lowering the barriers to entry to new parties. That lowering such barriers is a good thing is axiomatic in economics and the same reasons apply in politics. This applies particularly when party members of all 3 parties have no real influence on what the party stand for – eg Cameron’s decision that a referendum on the Constitreaty was no longer party policy, thereby reversing the policy, instantly, without any consultation with either members, conference or MPs, who would all, quite certainly have wanted to retain that “cast iron promise”. If parties can neither be replaced nor controlled there is no democracy. I personally think AV will quickly allow UKIP to replace the LudDims as 3rd party (at the very least) and establish a liberal Parliamentary majority (the Pseudoliberals having falsely gained votes for big statism by pretending to be traditional liberals which they certainly are not).

Tuesday, May 03, 2011

On Monday the Scotsman published my letter which is effectively a reprint of my blog on the Kelvin Park "riot". However it has not appeared on the online version which is quite remarkable. Though it went out to other papers, including those based more around Glasgow, it did not appear there, although they generally did print letters on the subject - all denouncing the "rioters".

I leave conclusions about how our MSM works to readers.Comments on the EU Referendum site have heavily reflected my piece and been overwhelmingly in agreement.
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Also in Monday's Scotsman Brian Monteith's article tears into 3 points on which the SNP's policies are clearly incompatible with their claims to promote independence. Their local income tax policy depends on Westminster agreeing to hand over £374 million, currently rebated in relation to the Community Charge but not due over income tax (this is really a subset of the fact that Scotland being poorer tends to pay less tax and get more money overall). Their plans to charge English students in Scottish Universities can work only if a United Kingdom exists - if England were independent of us, within the EU, they, like other EU citizens, could not be charged (many EU rules are silly and unenforceable but this exceeds most). And over the SNP commitment to ending all conventional power in favour of windmills:

Whatever the merits of their power-generating capability - the doubts of many engineers and scientists compared to the optimism of the commercial interests and government-funded lobbyists is a cause for concern - there is no escaping that wind turbines are heavily subsidised by higher charges forced upon on coal, gas and nuclear generation and managed by the UK Treasury.

In an independent Scotland the net transfer of monies from English consumers to Scottish wind farmers would cease and the subsidy transfer would have to be borne solely by Scottish consumers. Electricity consumption would be more expensive for those faced with paying for it in an independent Scotland. Salmond cannot deny this.

There are those that say Scotland could export its wind-generated energy but they ignore the fact that England is already connected to the French nuclear supply that costs 1.3p per kWh while British (mainly Scottish) wind power costs 14p per kWh when the 5.5p subsidy is removed.

I would add that, since wind is infinitely variable we would be relying on England providing conventional power to us (though the current interconnector would have to be greatly expanded) whenever the wind fell. This is the situation applying in Denmark except that they can buy and sell electricity with Norway, Sweden & Germany and sell mainly to Germany. Even so the electricity they buy, when demand is high, is charged at a far higher, sometimes infinitely higher, rate than Germany is willing to pay for their electricity at times when demand is low. Denmark thus has the world's most expensive electricity.

Scotland will be in a worse position since we have effectively only 1 customer/supplier to sell to or to buy from - a customer who can get French nuclear power produced at a 10th of our production price and a supplier who could plunge us into darkness at the flick of a switch. A UK government countenances southern money subsidising northern windmills, and their inabilities to provide power, but obviously a purely English government wouldn't.